A group of bishops (Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and United Methodist) and a Presbyterian mission co-worker, all based along the U.S.-Mexico border, found common ground to jointly address some key immigration issues, especially those being played out in Arizona.
The book, Bishops on the Border: Pastoral Responses to Immigration, grew out of their shared work and the relationships that developed among them. The ecumenical examination of immigration issues is drawn from engaging, first-person narratives.
The four bishops and missioner (The Most Rev. Gerald F. Kicanas, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tucson; The Rt. Rev. Kirk S. Smith, Episcopal Diocese of Arizona; The Rev. Stephen S. Talmage, bishop of the ELCA Grand Canyon Synod; Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño, California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church; and Mark Adams, Frontera de Cristo Presbyterian Border Ministry) worked together on behalf of local immigrant populations to address theological and pastoral concerns.
The book is “a wonderful source of biblical and theological reflection on the practice of the Christian faith from four different expressions of the body of Christ working and living within the sociopolitical and economic realities of the early 21st century U.S./Mexico borderlands,” said Mark Adams.
Bishop Kirk Smith, who wrote the foreword of the book, says the authors want to share “a part of our spiritual autobiography as it relates to our experience working on the Arizona border. Our approach is to be personal and confessional, which means that we also have, in places, made ourselves vulnerable.”
To order Bishops on the Border, visit www.churchpublishing.org.